[riverdawg]

"We ... made people take their shoes off at the door."

I understand to some degree your insistence on this, but in sluggish housing markets - where traffic volume is especially important - this is a real turn-off. A few years ago when we were looking to buy, a builder who was showing new homes in a semi-rural subdivision had this policy. The weather was sunny, and there was no danger of tracking in mud from the street. Mrs. Riverdawg's jaw dropped open, and she quickly waved us off the porch and back to the car. There were simply too many other nice houses on the market to put up with having to walk around in stockings/socks or bare feet to see a house. We wouldn't have minded if the builder had put plastic or paper sheets down instead, but he obviously didn't want to be bothered. Three months later, we noted that the same house was still on the market while others in the neighborhood (built by other contractors) had sold.

[Holicheese]

I agree 100%. My fiance and I had the whole cleaning down to a science. We could do top to bottom in 1.5 hours.
The realtor actually told us to calm down with the cleaning but it was the only thing in the process we could control.
It was when we had multiple people in one day that we really insisted the shoes would come off. That was only in the winter when there was snow and salt and sand in the driveway.
My thing was the cat box. I would fly home right before people would come over and do the bax and use a cat box de-stinker. My boy cat Lindros always seemed to know people were coming and he would save a fish heavy log for about 5 minutes before the people would arrive.